Though I would love to see the matchup, I'm not sure most of the BU faithful are too interested. This is written with all due respect, but national prominence is so new to most of our fan base, that they are not nearly as aware of players / programs outside of those we face regularly or in marquee matchups. There's no one in Waco who does not recognize the growing competition between us, you, Stanford, Notre Dame, etc whom we've seen in Final Fours. But without dissing our fans, our fan base is of a completely different kind than yours who keep up with and track not only other teams, but specific players on other teams. That said, most of our fans really don't know who DelleDonne is, so the question, 'How would we feel about facing her' would almost be a short-term response to a newpaper article about the best player on the next upcoming opponent.
That's not to slam our fan base. That's just where we are. We're getting better the more we remain in the national scene and have occasion to see other players and teams, but we spent so many years fighting to get to the top of the Big 12, that most fan energy was directed toward OU and TAM, and the others who seemed to keep us down, that our national reach of awareness was never piqued until March and then it was a week to week awarness of the names of starters on other team we might play.
It's just a different environment down here.
I think we would defend DelleDonne the same way we would defend any other player who moves between 3-4-5 as well as she does--with a mix of Madden, Williams, and Pope, and use Griner against her only if she completely destroyed Williams and Pope in the paint. I think we've seen in games vs. you guys and in our conference vs. Iowa State, that our team changes completely if / when we send Brittney out to defend at the arc. The whole structure of how our other 5 play changes. So against DelleDonne, I'm betting we roll the dice and see if she could beat us from 15-25 feet out and challenge her with Brittney only when she drives the paint. And when she chooses to post up, Brittney would be a back side support rather than the primary defender in her back.
Between Williams/Pope primarily and with Griner rotating to her when she dribbles in the paint, I think we could have enough other secondary help to keep her from going off on a career scoring night, and then on the other end we would simply have too many other offensive options vs their other 4 to be challenged too much.
The same reason I would not fear that matchup is the same frustration (anger?) you guys had when she negged you. Paired with one other All American type or surrounded by a team of Kelly Farris types, DelleDonne might well havegone down as th greatest player of the modern era, but as she is as an isolated start in a mid-level team, she is just not enough as one great player to carry her team past you, ND, us, other current FF type teams.
Too many words. Bottom line. She won't get much attention until if/when we are matched with her and I doubt the Committee does that.
